The end of it
by jelenamichel
Summary: But you're the expert at being gone in the morning." A careless remark during an argument brings up a conversation Tony and Ziva should have had a year ago. One shot.


**A/N: I haven't given up on my story **_**Heat wave**_**. I just posted another chapter tonight. But this came to me this morning while I was driving to work and I had to get it out. I wrote the basic outline on the back of an envelope while stuck in a roadworks traffic jam outside Canberra Airport, then banged it together in a few hours, so once again I haven't done my usual half-dozen edits. Apologies for any mistakes or if it doesn't flow as well as it could.  
It's set post-Jetlag, but also deals with Judgment Day.  
Rating is for two swears.  
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

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The fight had been brewing since they arrived at work that morning. Nothing in particular that had brought about their mutual irritation—it was a routine day, just like a hundred others, with nothing out of the ordinary that would cause anyone offence. But some days, and for no good reason, your friends and family just bugged you.

Nothing should have come from the irritation. They should have just gotten through the bad day, spent the night decompressing, and when they met in the morning everything would have been fine again.

But that wasn't how it happened.

That night they found themselves in a hotel room together, setting up surveillance equipment for an op that would start the next morning. Ziva was sick of Tony's increasingly lame jokes, and Tony was sick of Ziva telling him how to do his job. Their tempers were getting shorter, their voices louder and their glares dirtier until, finally, it crossed the line.

"And you should be long gone from here in the morning when our target arrives," Ziva lectured him, as if Tony wasn't already 100 per cent clear on the details.

His reply had come from nowhere. He hadn't felt it coming, hadn't even been thinking about the event to which it referred. And yet, he'd shot her a bitter smirk and let fly with a verbal smackdown. "Me? But _you're_ the expert at being gone in the morning."

He was regretting it even before the sentence was fully out of his mouth, and when she stopped dead in her tracks and looked back at him like he'd slapped her in the face, he wanted to shoot himself.

It was clear that she knew exactly what he was talking about. _Paris._

When he'd woken on that morning a month ago, his body pleasantly aching from a night of wanton, insatiable sex, he'd expected to feel her there against him. He'd wanted her face to be inches from his when he opened his eyes. Instead, her side of the bed was cold and empty, save for a note on her pillow with the name of a café and a time. He hadn't called her on her behaviour when they met up later. If she was playing it cool, he could be ice. It was no big deal. He'd done it a hundred times. _Nothing to see here, folks, move along_.

Bullshit. It hurt like hell.

Nevertheless, he hadn't intended to bring it up now. Maybe not _ever_, but definitely not now, and certainly not in those words. She looked back at him from six feet away, her jaw tight and her eyes full of something he couldn't read. He didn't know whether she was going to yell, slap or cry.

She surprised him. Instead of going the full Mossad on his ass, Ziva swallowed and dropped her eyes to the ground. Telltale guilt that made him feel like crap.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…I didn't mean…" he started, except that, just maybe, he did.

Ziva looked up and shook her head, as if absolving him. "No, it is…I should not have," she said with a pained frown, surprising him again by electing to actually talk about it. "I was concerned with self-preservation at the time."

Tony almost winced from the sting. "From me?"

He could hear the control in her voice as she tried to explain, and he knew she was trying not to fight. "I was thinking of the last time, and how you did not talk to me for four months afterwards."

Realization dawned on him, and he felt a shot of pain lance through his chest. She was talking about _that_ night, the one after Jenny's funeral, the one right before he got on a boat and she got on a plane to Israel. The night they'd first slept together in sadness and love and desperation. The night that had both kept him going and torn him down.

She was right. After that night, he hadn't spoken to her again. Not until she turned up in that bar looking ten kinds of hot, and he felt like he could breathe again. Not that he'd tell her that.

"Because I got on a boat," he argued, acting like it was obvious and she was crazy to question it further. Of course, it was _him_ who had accused her of craziness in the past, and he should have known she wouldn't accept that.

"You could not find a phone?" she challenged, the fight in her starting to come through. "You could not find a computer to answer my emails? You could not pick up a pen and a piece of paper to write?"

He could have done any of those things. And he'd tried—over and over. But he couldn't dial the last number, or click on send, or drop the letter in the mail. He'd never found the guts.

"It wasn't always easy," he lied.

Hurt filled her eyes, and he sucked in a breath. "But you still managed to email Abby twice a week."

Tony had another lie ready to go. _It was _Abby_. You _know_ what she's like. If I hadn't kept in contact, she would have had a breakdown._ But the look on her face brought part of the truth out.

"I wasn't trying to blow you off, Ziva," he said quietly. Not her. Never her.

Ziva let out a bitter laugh. "But you were going to let that be the end of it," she guessed. "Forget the sex for the moment, and tell me if you had _any_ intention of talking to me ever again. Because it did not seem that way. It seemed that my partner of three years decided that if I was not physically around him, then there was no need to continue with any kind of contact. That he was happy to cut me out of his life completely."

Her breathing was shallow now, as she fought tears and struggled to keep from screaming at him with a year and a half of suppressed anger. It was not the first time he'd been responsible for the welling in her eyes and the anger in her jaw, and each time he did it, he hated it more. He hated that his actions had made her think such ridiculous thoughts, but really, what had he expected? If the tables had been turned, he would have come to the same conclusion.

"No," he said, shaking his head and feeling his own eyes burn. "That's not it at all. I wasn't thinking that far ahead, Ziva. I was just trying to get through the days. I was depressed out of my mind."

"You think you were the only one?" she threw back. "Why didn't you talk to me about it?"

"I couldn't talk to _you_," he said, and rushed to explain when the hurt in her eyes got deeper. "You're Ziva. You're the professional. You're the one who can put things in little compartments and not let them touch. You can put your anger over being sent back to Israel into this little box, and then live in the other little box that lets you do your job without distraction." He ran an aggravated hand through his hair. "I couldn't call you to say _Hey, you know what? Everything in my life is in a big sticky blob and I can't deal with any of it_. I can't say that to you."

Her voice rose with his. "Why not? You thought I would not understand?"

"No! I thought you'd think that I wasn't good enough," he argued back, crossing his arms tightly over his chest as he felt his grip on his emotions slip. "Not cut out for the job, or not good enough for you. I'd just gotten Jenny killed, and I already _knew_ all that. I didn't deserve any help then. I'd just fucked up as bad as I could have, and I couldn't go crying to you because you wouldn't be able to lie and tell me I was wrong just to make me feel better."

"I _did_ tell you that you were wrong!" Ziva cried, stepping into his space. "I _did_ tell you that you were not to blame, and I meant it, Tony. I still mean it. And yes, you _should_ have come crying to me because I'm your partner and I was there."

He shook his head and his voice dropped. "You kept telling me to call her—"

"And you did," she cut in. "You did your job, Tony. We both did. We followed her orders. Orders she gave because she did not want us there when they came for her."

Tony dropped her gaze and stared off over her shoulder, the guilt still eating at him. "I know that," he said softly, honestly. "But I didn't know it then."

They stood quietly for a moment, almost touching, as they caught their breaths and calmed down. Eventually, Ziva stepped back again and steered them back to the topic she wanted to resolve.

"So, you decided that you would not talk to me for an indeterminate length of time because you felt guilty about Jenny?" she tried to translate.

Tony heaved a heavy sigh, and knew that there was no way that he'd get out of this conversation without giving her total honesty. "That's part of it. The other part was that I really, badly needed to talk to you, but was terrified of what I needed to talk to you about. I'm still kind of terrified."

Ziva stared at him with her familiar _does not compute_ expression. The one that he found alternatively adorable and frustrating. Tonight, it was frustrating. He needed her to read between the lines to save him from having to say the words.

"You are terrified of me?" she echoed, disbelief knocking the hurt out of her eyes.

Tony gave her a wan smile. "I'm terrified of what you can do to me."

Ziva's face fell so fast he barely saw the movement, and he knew she'd gotten the wrong idea. She started shaking her head. "Tony, I would never—"

"I don't mean I'm scared that you'll beat me up," he clarified, and then took another deep breath, preparing to be as honest as he possibly could right now. "I mean I'm scared of the things I know I would do for you. Of the things I want to say, and what I want you to know."

Ziva's chest heaved with her breathing, but she stayed quiet. It was that silence that told him that she was starting to understand what he was saying.

"If I'd called you, all I would have said was _please come home, please come home_." He held her gaze and silently begged her to understand. "I wanted to call, and I would have eventually. _After_ I was sure I would've been able to keep the begging to myself."

He swallowed hard and forced out the words that he needed her to know. "I wasn't blowing you off after sleeping with you, Ziva. You're not another notch. Not then and not now. I was trying to make space while I worked out how to deal with not having you with me."

Ziva's throat burned as his eyes fell from hers again, and she realized that they had been dealing with the same thing—the loss of each other and their chance at a future—but in completely different ways. "Self-preservation," she said, drawing the parallel between him back then and her in Paris.

"Yeah."

He watched her look away as she bit her lip, gathering her strength and pride. "I left you in Paris because I thought you would push me away," she admitted, pushing the words past the lump of regret in her throat. "I did not want to see the look in your eyes while you tried to find the appropriate words about being friends and colleagues and checking that everything was _cool _with us."

Tony blew out a humorless laugh. "That's not what I was gonna do."

"Yes, but given past experience…" She trailed off with a shrug, and this time Tony got it. They held gazes quietly, and finally shared a rueful smile at how far off the mark they'd both been.

When the tension left the room and it appeared that neither of them wanted to make any more confessions, Ziva gestured at the surveillance equipment. "You should still not be here when our target arrives tomorrow," she said lightly.

Tony nodded easily. "Yeah, it's fine. I'll be in the van with Gibbs. You need a hand with the rest of this stuff?"

She shook her head with a grateful smile. "No, thank you. I am almost done."

He nodded and took a step to the door. "Okay. Night."

Ziva watched his back as he left, and she knew that she couldn't leave it like this. "Wait, Tony?"

He turned back to her, and then found himself pulled into a long, slow kiss. His arms couldn't go around her fast enough as he claimed the kiss that he'd wanted on that morning in Paris. A warm, melting, toe-curling embrace that made his heart stutter and his breath catch. Too soon she pulled back, but she looked at him with intent as she laid her hand against the side of his face. Tony broke into a warm smile, understanding what she was wasn't saying.

"I want another shot at that morning-after wake up," he told her.

Ziva nodded. "You'll get it."

His smile got wider before he leaned in for another, much quicker kiss, and then stepped back. "See you tomorrow."

She let him go this time with a small, indulgent smile tugging at her tingling lips and much lighter shoulders. Oh yeah, one day soon she was going to morning-after his ass off.

**

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Just some random speculation on what may have happened right before Jetlag and right after Judgment Day. It always kind of bugged me that Ziva never took him to task after he didn't contact her that summer, and this is just a little theory on why he didn't. **


End file.
